Amelia Parker: Executive Director
E-Mail: amelia(at)pbiusa.org
Amelia Parker has worked in the field of human rights for close to 20 years, working both at home and abroad. In 2000, she traveled to Ghana to work for the Legal Resources Centre, where she researched the right to work of Sierra Leonean refugees, as well as the human rights implication of water privatization in Ghana. Also during the early part of the 2000s, she served as a Legislative Coordinator for Amnesty International - USA. In 2006, she joined the staff of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Washington, DC as program coordinator where she designed and implemented human rights programming such as the Genocide Teaching Project, which trained law students to teach the lessons of genocide in area high schools. Most recently, her focus has been on the domestic implementation of human rights laws in the U.S. In 2007, she published an article concerning racial inequalities in the U.S. public education system and U.S. non-compliance with international treaty norms, which led to her being a contributing author to the U.S. Human Rights Network’s shadow report on U.S. compliance to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Amelia served as executive director of a community organizing non-profit in Tennessee called Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM) from 2009-2013 before joining the staff at PBI-USA in 2014.
Pat Davis: Advocacy Coordinator
Email: advocacy(at)pbiusa.org
Pat Davis is a writer and human rights activist. She began working in human rights in 1992, when she joined the staff of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission as Communications Director, a position she held for five years. She left to co-author a book with her colleague Dianna Ortiz, The Blindfold’s Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. Published in 2002, the book recounts Ortiz’s experiences in Guatemala and her struggle for justice. Pat returned as executive director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission from 2003—2005. As director, she led the organization’s advocacy work, developed campaigns, led delegations to Guatemala, testified as an expert witness in political asylum cases, and produced regular human rights reports and analyses. More recently, she turned to dramatic writing for advocacy, penning a stage play, which was produced by a new professional theater company, the Digna Theater, in Tucson, Arizona. She has published articles on foreign policy in The Nation, Foreign Policy in Focus, Counterpunch, and Common Dreams. Her work has also been published by the North American Congress on Latin America, the Copenhagen Initiative for Central America and Mexico, and the Center for International Policy.
Human Rights Internship
Kiana Boroumand is a rising junior at the Johns Hopkins University, where she studies sociology and English literature. This past year, she served as the Director of Programming for the Foreign Affairs Symposium, the Editor-in-Chief of the Johns Hopkins Undergraduate Law Review, and the Managing Editor of Americas: The Johns Hopkins Journal of Latin American Studies. Additionally, she is the recipient of several research fellowships, including the Dean’s Undergraduate Research Award and the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award. She is a passionate traveler, and has studied abroad in Havana, Cuba, and at the London School of Economics. Her favorite novel is 100 Years of Solitude, and she is originally from Baltimore, Maryland.
Nicole Bennett-Fite is a senior at Stanford University studying Anthropology and International Relations. During university she has worked in local government in California, as a researcher in Costa Rica with the Earth Sciences and Anthropology departments, and on various divestment campaigns on campus. She recently returned to university after a year and a half away. During that time she worked as a journalist, first in Berkeley California with KFPA-Pacifica, then in Tajikistan for the BBC and finally in New Jersey with PBS. After witnessing first hand the danger that journalists and other human rights defenders face around the world, she was inspired to start working with PBI. She looks forward to a building a career in human rights advocacy post graduation.
Job Opportunities with PBI-USA
For general inquiries, please email info(at)pbiusa.org.